Shuttlesworth Starts the ACMHR

Shuttlesworth Starts the ACMHR. March Route Towards a Purposeful Life. By mid-1956, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was crippling that city's economic base. To stop its success, pro-segregationists searched for a legal loophole to block the NAACP, one of the boycott organizers. That loophole was that it had failed to register in Alabama as an out-of-state organization. Before making a move, State Attorney General John Patterson demanded that the NAACP hand over its memberships rolls. Sensing the harassment and terrorism would come against African Americans who were NAACP members, Rev. Shuttlesworth and its other leaders refused to obey. Patterson then went to a state judge who issued a court order blocking the NAACP from operating on any level in the entire state. Unbowed, Rev. Shuttlesworth called on Rev. N. H. Smith, Rev. Ed Gardner and other ministers in Birmingham to lay the groundwork for a replacement organization., Paired marker June 5, 1956 , Rev. Shuttlesworth organized ministers and lay leaders to create the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in June 1956. Rather than work to gradually win civil rights for Blacks, the new organization reflected the group's younger, more aggressive style of activism. The ACMHR was founded on their deep religious faith and deep conviction of their cause, believing wholeheartedly in Dr. King's statement at a bus boycott mass meeting that “If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong." Rev. Shuttlesworth and his fellow ACMHR members embraced the principles of nonviolence, but aggressively confronted every instance of racial discrimination and inequality rather than focus on one or two goals. And they wanted change immediately, not gradually. Thus the ACMHR earned Rev. Shuttlesworth respect among Birmingham's common folk. It also made him Birmingham's most hated and feared Black leader among pro-segregationists. , "I was screaming against segregation. I was getting the crowd whipped up." , Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth , on how he urged the 1,000 people at Sardis Baptist Church to approve the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights., Lesson E6: What do you think of Rev. Shuttlesworth's idea to start a new organization similar to the NAACP?